How do BCAs problems impact cavers, caving, and caves?

[kay]

You are correct. But exploration is about an individual relationship with one's surroundings, not originality. The emphasis on original exploration, original science, original art, original thought, etc. is a product of an ignorant and narcissistic society.

You misunderstood me. I was making the point that the sort of exploration described by Jpasch25 will, in the UK, mean you are exploring a hole known to others and you need to make sure that what you do isn't undoing work of others. Not worrying about originality per se.

 

[droid]

But exploration is about an individual relationship with one's surroundings, not originality.

Is it?

I was under the impression it was more about curiosity about what might be there and its relationship to what is already known.

 

[NewStuff]

So, the urge to explore, without which none of us would be here, is wrong unless you paint over it with other more intellectual reasons?

It's the reason *every single explorer I know* does what they do, no matter if it's natural or manmade. "What's in there then?"

And for that reason, you are a troll. You cannot go underground and NOT have that urge. Go elsewhere.

 

[Kenilworth]

You misunderstood me. I was making the point that the sort of exploration described by Jpasch25 will, in the UK, mean you are exploring a hole known to others and you need to make sure that what you do isn't undoing work of others. Not worrying about originality per se.

Jpasch is exploring a hole known to others. I don't think there is any danger of undoing anything. My point was that the man is self-motivated, that's all.

But exploration is about an individual relationship with one's surroundings, not originality.

Is it?

Yes.

I was under the impression it was more about curiosity about what might be there and its relationship to what is already known.

That's right. What's the difference?

and its relationship to what is already known

But, known to whom? The best exploration comes from a desire to build on what we personally know and understand, and has nothing to do with breaking new ground for the human race.

So, the urge to explore, ... is wrong unless you paint over it with other more intellectual reasons?

(As you recognize, this is very much off topic. I was trying to use an example to show that clubs are not required to kindle exploratory zeal and even what some would call "scientific inquiry." This pertains to the original topic of the thread, which was to examine the impact on cavers, caves and caving if BCA or the like were to be lost)

-----

However, no. nothing intellectual about it. But unless you are willing to be responsible for the places you impact and unless you are learning something from time spent in fragile places, then you are being wasteful and exploitive.

It's the reason *every single explorer I know* does what they do, no matter if it's natural or manmade. "What's in there then?"

That's fine. Is "what's in there" (the cave, and their brains) the same when they get out?

And for that reason, you are a troll. You cannot go underground and NOT have that urge. Go elsewhere.

This is entirely untrue, as evidenced by the thousands of cavers who are not explorers, who learn little to nothing from their caving, and who go round and round the same bits of passage time and again though they know exactly what's in there.
Go elsewhere? I'm off to WV for a week of digging and mapping, does that count?
-------

I've been round and round these things with you specifically, and you haven't contributed many useful objections, questions, clarifications, or insights. Rather than follow you off-topic over and over again, it's back to ignoring, sorry

 

[Kenilworth]

You are correct. But exploration is about an individual relationship with one's surroundings, not originality. The emphasis on original exploration, original science, original art, original thought, etc. is a product of an ignorant and narcissistic society.

You misunderstood me. I was making the point that the sort of exploration described by Jpasch25 will, in the UK, mean you are exploring a hole known to others and you need to make sure that what you do isn't undoing work of others. Not worrying about originality per se.

Thinking more about this Kay, I guess I don't understand.
Do UK cavers investigate the possibility of ongoing scientific studies before going in every cave, in an effort to avoid inadvertent damage to other's work? What possible harm to other's work could come from sampling water and examining the sand in the stream?

 

[owd git]

Thinking more about this Kay, I guess I don't understand.
Do UK cavers investigate the possibility of ongoing scientific studies before going in every cave, in an effort to avoid inadvertent damage to other's work? What possible harm to other's work could come from sampling water and examining the sand in the stream?
[/quote]
see origonal title of thread why not open another? we can then let you Troll away in peace.
UKCaving surely doesn't stand for U Kenilworth caving, does it?

 

[kay]

Thinking more about this Kay, I guess I don't understand.
Do UK cavers investigate the possibility of ongoing scientific studies before going in every cave, in an effort to avoid inadvertent damage to other's work? What possible harm to other's work could come from sampling water and examining the sand in the stream?

Exploration is not usually confined to "sampling water and examining the sand in the stream". It's easy to think of scenarios where unintentional damage to the cave or annoyance to other cavers can be caused because of lack of communication. Clubs, national bodies aren't the only way of communicating, but they're one way.

 

[droid]

I was under the impression it was more about curiosity about what might be there and its relationship to what is already known.

That's right. What's the difference?

and its relationship to what is already known

But, known to whom? The best exploration comes from a desire to build on what we personally know and understand, and has nothing to do with breaking new ground for the human race.

The difference is that my interpretation doesn't depend on pseudo-philosophical meanderings.
Your second point is an opinion. It is entirely possible to 'break new ground' out of altruism rather than egotism. Not all cavers are as selfish as you appear to be.

 

[NewStuff]

The difference is that my interpretation doesn't depend on pseudo-philosophical meanderings.
Your second point is an opinion. It is entirely possible to 'break new ground' out of altruism rather than egotism. Not all cavers are as selfish as you appear to be.

I don't get his attitude either. I explore, dig, crawl etc so that when I find something new, *everyone* can go and see it for themselves. I don't care that I'm first, I care that it's accessible to all, without elitism, empire building or joining certain clubs.

 

[Kenilworth]

It is entirely possible to 'break new ground' out of altruism rather than egotism. Not all cavers are as selfish as you appear to be.

Cite an example of altruistic exploration. Hopefully you can do better than Jenner and Curie. While you're at it, cite an example of my selfishness.

 

[droid]

Cite an example of altruistic exploration. Hopefully you can do better than Jenner and Curie. While you're at it, cite an example of my selfishness.

No.

 

[Kenilworth]

I don't get his attitude either.

Think about it this way. It was written that all flesh is grass. Can we imagine this piece of earth as flesh?

A man can picture a woman. Picture a woman who is beautiful, not with the chimerical perfection of the physical models, but who is healthy, joyous, confident and fertile, who has matured physically, sexually, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Imagine that within the mystery and complexity of her, there is understanding and trust between you, that you can see her in candor, unadorned by nothing more than what she is. Imagine that all of your life and activity is bound up in fidelity to this woman, and that fidelity?s works are its reward. Some of you might have such a relationship with such a woman, most of you will have to strain your imaginations.

Imagine her raped. Confidence and joy pass away.

Imagine her now, by force a prostitute. Her sexuality divorced from fertility, intimacy, or fidelity, she gives token for token in a diseased shadow of sacred acts. Imagine she herself is diseased in body and spirit.

Imagine her wasted away. Bony and ragged, haggard and filthy and sick. Unable now even to satisfy the most depraved and desperate of her customers.

Now imagine her naked, not in the purity of trust, but in death. Lying face up and decomposing, all her features vanishing under the swarm and scurry of the beetles and maggots until only the bones are left. And even when the bones start to break apart and fall away, the swarm grows and grows, feasting on air...

I have seen her in the ground and grass of my home, and have seen that the rapists, pimps, buyers and maggots are men. What is to become then of my love for her? And how can I reconcile the thing that has been done with my love for they who did it?

--

Trying to write about cave conservation has been a small part of my attempts to understand and write about the places I live in and care about. Anyone honest who has taken any sort of serious look at the problems of land use will admit to a certain degree of helplessness and will have experienced sorrow. I have seen her in the ground and grass of my home, but I am powerless to act in the face of enormous forces that have escaped voluntary containment by humankind, much less individual humans. Being powerless to protect something you love can understandably lead to overprotectiveness wherever there is a hint of hope. If, in using virgin caves as an analog for the virgin land, I have been so, I cannot apologize.

One of the several problems in trying to communicate on this topic is that the majority are unaware or unconvinced or even unwilling to consider the possibility that a great loss has occurred and is doing still. This applies to most readers of this site, who have never seen virgin land, most of whom have never seen a virgin cave, and who live in an age of unprecedented adultery.

Another problem is that we have become so downright lazy mentally that any unfamiliar or compound thought is labelled philosophy. I would rather be called a troll than a philosopher. I'm a simple person asking simple questions. If the answers are hard, admit it, I do, but don't excuse yourself from thought by dismissing the questions as half-baked intellectualism.

Mostly it is simply too late, and the results of discussing conservation here were inevitable, though I didn't know that when I started. I write because it helps me to think, to clarify my feelings and opinions. Often it is not until I write about a topic that I know exactly what my beliefs are. This site is not my motivation for writing about caves, to which fact the roughly five thousand unpublished pages in my cabinet are witness. But if I feel that something I've written could be shared here to the mutual benefit of the reader and myself (for I am often corrected or led into new and interesting thoughts, and I have received enough private correspondence to believe that I've been more than an annoyance to a few), I will continue to post it here.

 

[NewStuff]

Even a skim-read of that confirms you're batshit crazy. a Troll, or both.

Seems a lot simpler, memorable and effective to say "Don't break stuff, don't be an asshole".

 

[owd git]

While you're at it, cite an example of my selfishness.

I write because it helps me to think, to clarify my feelings and opinions. Often it is not until I write about a topic that I know exactly what my beliefs are. This site is not my motivation for writing about caves, to which fact the roughly five thousand unpublished pages in my cabinet are witness. But if I feel that something I've written could be shared here to the mutual benefit of the reader and myself (for I am often corrected or led into new and interesting thoughts, and I have received enough private correspondence to believe that I've been more than an annoyance to a few), I will continue to post it here.

How self motivated?     

 

[Kenilworth]

Mr. Owd,
Are you implying that it's selfish of me to withhold the contents of the two dozen notebooks I have here? Or are you lauding my motivation?

NewStuff,
You seem to be quite accomplished at skim-reading. This hasn't got to do with breaking things, or being an asshole. I'm trying to explain the context for my feelings on cave conservation. Though the analogy is rough, it's fairly accurate. Allow me to provide a key:
---
The initial raping of the land was at the hands of loggers. Forestry does not have to be rape, but as practiced from the beginning in this country, and from long ago in yours too I would guess, it has been. It has been a forcible and violent and injurious taking of what was not deserved by the takers, who had no understanding of or permanent relationship with the land.

Steep slopes were logged and frantically farmed until the topsoil was gone downstream, then turned to poor pasture. The fertile flat lands were over and misused until, where I live, even their soil is little more than an inert matrix for the miracle of modern chemical agriculture. And this is prostitution, the land forced to give up its miracles with no chance of reciprocity or love.

Eventually, the sickness of the land is too extreme to support even the shadow of agrarianism. So the economists think it fortunate that as the ground is being used up, urbanization is on the increase. The dead land is blanketed in asphalt and concrete and buildings and is peopled by profoundly ignorant consumers who produce absolutely nothing of value to the natural world, which they somehow do not recognize themselves part of. They have been taught and fully believe that food grows on shelves or in restaurants, and always will.

So they live on the skeleton of the land, cutting it down here, heaping it up over there, buying and buying from greater and greater distances the ill-gotten yields of the industrial farms. It is not healthy for a place to export its fertility, and it is adulterous to take fruits that one is not married to.

The same behaviors, on a much smaller scale, define the threat to caves.
---
Aside, I've had a good search around for the origins of the term batshit, or batshit crazy. Alas, it seems that no truth is to be found.

 

[droid]

And I return to a point made, it feels, *years* ago. That you are speaking from an American perspective. And in that I agree.

Here in Britain the situation is very different: we've not had the large scale agro-ecodisasters like the 'dust bowl(s)'. Clearcutting is not a problem (though planting of alien species is).

And you are the sort of archetypal blinkered American you despise so much: unable or unwilling to see that the sort of bollocks that goes on in the Land of the Free doesn't necessarily pertain for everywhere.

 

[owd git]

I Imply nothing, I state what I wish to be understood, not infered!
You requested citation of an example of your selfishness.

Mr. Git. we r'e not on first name terms.

 

[2xw]

Here in Britain the situation is very different: we've not had the large scale agro-ecodisasters like the 'dust bowl(s)'. Clearcutting is not a problem (though planting of alien species is).

Soil degradation in the UK costs us ?1.2billion a year so not sure I agree. Our entire agrarian system is an agro-ecodisaster

 

[Kenilworth]

Here in Britain the situation is very different: we've not had the large scale agro-ecodisasters like the 'dust bowl(s)'. Clearcutting is not a problem (though planting of alien species is).

Soil degradation in the UK costs us ?1.2billion a year so not sure I agree. Our entire agrarian system is an agro-ecodisaster

Moreover, clearcutting is an enormous problem in the UK. It might not be happening now, but your history of deforestation has impacted soil quality far into the future. Forest land is increasing in the UK, but even within those forests it takes centuries to regain lost soil fertility.

 

[Kenilworth]

And I return to a point made, it feels, *years* ago. That you are speaking from an American perspective. And in that I agree.

Here in Britain the situation is very different: we've not had the large scale agro-ecodisasters like the 'dust bowl(s)'. Clearcutting is not a problem (though planting of alien species is).

And you are the sort of archetypal blinkered American you despise so much: unable or unwilling to see that the sort of bollocks that goes on in the Land of the Free doesn't necessarily pertain for everywhere.

The American agrarian principles that destroyed fertility were the direct descendants of the British agrarian principles that did the same. The only difference is the greater landmass, which led to an absolute frenzy of exploitation. Plenitude, through ignorant and selfish eyes, justifies waste.

While I can speak about agriculture in America, I cannot speak from an American perspective. The scope of my experience is much smaller than that. My perspective is about three thousand square miles big, broken up between three States. However, I've repeatedly insisted on the limits of my experience, and make no claims that it has application everywhere.